Android beats Oracle patent claims

The verdict on patents went largely as expected, no infringement. Most of Oracle's claims were dismissed before the case went to trial, one of the four two patents at issue in trial is about to be overturned, and software patent claims tend to fall apart once tested in court. Only people who think Florian Mueller is an authoritative source on software patents will be surprised by this verdict.

Oracle's copyright claims are all that remain at issue in this trial. The jury found only 9 lines of RangeCheck code as infringing, they could not decide Oracle's larger SSO claims on API headers. So the SSO claims are up to judge Alsup.

The only remaining patent threats to the Android ecosystem are Apple's "We have a patent on rounded corners" and "We've patented s/\b(999-999-9999)\b/<a href="call:$1">$1<\/a>/g", claims so weak that Apple won't take on Google directly, and Microsoft's behind-the-scenes machinations. Both of these are rear-guard attempts by aging companies to keep a lid on innovation, and both are likely to go the way of all the patent claims against Linux.

Hopefully Google will continue on the course of knocking down patents rather than settling. Knocking down software patents expands the competitive space for all players in the software industry, and makes room for small, disruptive players to transform whole business segments.